Eigen, Manfred (1927 - )

A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

Jagdish Mehra (ed.) The Physicist's Conception of Nature, 1973.

Egrafov, M.

If you ask
mathematicians what
they do, you always
get the same answer.
They think. They
think about
difficult and
unusual problems.
They do not think
about ordinary
problems: they just
write down the
answers.

Mathematics
Magazine, v. 65 no.
5, December 1992.

Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1758)

When I am violently
beset with
temptations, or
cannot rid myself of
evil thoughts, [I
resolve] to do some
Arithmetic, or
Geometry, or some
other study, which
necessarily engages
all my thoughts, and
unavoidably keeps
them from wandering.

In T. Mallon, A
Book of One's
Own. Ticknor &
Fields, New York,
1984, pp. 106-107.

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)

Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.

In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)

To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic - like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the "cat without a grin" and the "grin without a cat" are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.

The Expanding Universe..

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)

I believe there are
15,747,724,136,275,
002,577,605,653,961,
181,555,468,044,717,
914,527,116,709,366,
231,425,076,185,631,
031,296 protons in
the universe and the
same number of
electrons.

The Philosophy of
Physical Science.
Cambridge, 1939.

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.